L. Kane lived in Hoonah and married the daughter of Lucy Shotter and George Ray Shotter, Senior.

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Frank Shotter of Hoonah was born to Lucy Shotter and George Ray Shotter, Senior. His siblings include George Ray Shotter, Junior on April 5, 1882 in Chermainus, British Columbia, Canada, Frank Shotter, Mrs. L. Kane (sp) and Mrs. Thomas Murry of Hoonah, Mrs. J.O. Ross of Seattle, and Margaret Shotter-Evans of California.

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Lucy Shotter was a Tlinigit from Wrangell.

She married George Ray Shotter, Senior. Their children include George Ray Shotter, Junior on April 5, 1882 in Chermainus, British Columbia Canada, Frank Shotter, Mrs. L. Kane (sp) and Mrs. Thomas Murry of Hoonah, Mrs. J.O. Ross of Seattle, and Margaret Shotter-Evans of California.

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George Ray Shotter, Junior was born April 5, 1882 in Chermainus, British Columbia Canada to George Ray Shotter, Senior of Canada and Lucy Shotter of Wrangell. Siblings include Frank Shotter, Mrs. L. Kane (sp) and Mrs. Thomas Murry of Hoonah, Mrs. J.O. Ross of Seattle, and Margaret Shotter-Evans of California.

He was of mixed race, 5'9", 145 pounds, dark complexion and dark hair.

He married Frances W. Shotter from Hoonah. They had no living children at the time of his death.

Shotter worked as a fox rancher.

He died of pneumonia on January 4, 1931 at age 48 in St. Ann's Hospital after a 20 day stay with Dr. W.W. Council attending. Shotter was buried in the Douglas Indian Cemetery, with Chas W. Carter undertaker.

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In 1898, prospectors Mix Silva, Edward Findley, and Perry Wiley, grubstaked for Jack Dalton, discovered placer gold on Porcupine Creek north of Haines near the Dalton trail. Subsequently, the Porcupine mining district was organized on October 22, 1898.

On November 5, 1898, Dalton and his three prospectors located the Discovery Claim; additional claims were located by Dalton and his business partners E. B. Hanley and John Malony. The district was stampeded in 1899 and prospectors found gold in the nearby creeks and gold or copper in areas as much as sixty miles distant, including the Rainy Hollow district in Canada. The first-years gold production was reportedly worth $50,000, of which about $40,000 came from Dalton's Discovery Claim.

The deposits in the district were rich but fairly deep and needed complex infrastructure. Miles of ditches and flumes were built to supply water to hydraulic lifts, sometimes called gravel elevators, where miners recovered the gold. Commercial support to the new district was conveniently supplied by the Porcupine Trading Company which was organized by Dalton, Hanley, and Malony on August 1, 1899. The company brought in mining equipment and extended liberal credit to other miners.

In 1900, Dalton and party shipped in 300 tons of equipment and supplies. The mines operated profitably until about 1905 when a major flood washed out a considerable amount of the mining infrastructure. Recognizing that they had probably extracted most of easily won gold, Dalton, Hanley, and Malony sold their interests, profitably, in 1907.

Alaska Mining Hall of Fame

In 1898, prospectors Mix Silva, Edward Findley, and Perry Wiley, grubstaked for Jack Dalton, discovered placer gold on Porcupine Creek north of Haines near the Dalton trail. Subsequently, the Porcupine mining district was organized on October 22, 1898.

On November 5, 1898, Dalton and his three prospectors located the Discovery Claim; additional claims were located by Dalton and his business partners E. B. Hanley and John Malony. The district was stampeded in 1899 and prospectors found gold in the nearby creeks and gold or copper in areas as much as sixty miles distant, including the Rainy Hollow district in Canada. The first-years gold production was reportedly worth $50,000, of which about $40,000 came from Dalton's Discovery Claim.

The deposits in the district were rich but fairly deep and needed complex infrastructure. Miles of ditches and flumes were built to supply water to hydraulic lifts, sometimes called gravel elevators, where miners recovered the gold. Commercial support to the new district was conveniently supplied by the Porcupine Trading Company which was organized by Dalton, Hanley, and Malony on August 1, 1899. The company brought in mining equipment and extended liberal credit to other miners.

In 1900, Dalton and party shipped in 300 tons of equipment and supplies. The mines operated profitably until about 1905 when a major flood washed out a considerable amount of the mining infrastructure. Recognizing that they had probably extracted most of easily won gold, Dalton, Hanley, and Malony sold their interests, profitably, in 1907.

Alaska Mining Hall of Fame

In 1898, prospectors Mix Silva, Edward Findley, and Perry Wiley, grubstaked for Jack Dalton, discovered placer gold on Porcupine Creek north of Haines near the Dalton trail. Subsequently, the Porcupine mining district was organized on October 22, 1898.

On November 5, 1898, Dalton and his three prospectors located the Discovery Claim; additional claims were located by Dalton and his business partners E. B. Hanley and John Malony. The district was stampeded in 1899 and prospectors found gold in the nearby creeks and gold or copper in areas as much as sixty miles distant, including the Rainy Hollow district in Canada. The first-years gold production was reportedly worth $50,000, of which about $40,000 came from Dalton's Discovery Claim.

The deposits in the district were rich but fairly deep and needed complex infrastructure. Miles of ditches and flumes were built to supply water to hydraulic lifts, sometimes called gravel elevators, where miners recovered the gold. Commercial support to the new district was conveniently supplied by the Porcupine Trading Company which was organized by Dalton, Hanley, and Malony on August 1, 1899. The company brought in mining equipment and extended liberal credit to other miners.

In 1900, Dalton and party shipped in 300 tons of equipment and supplies. The mines operated profitably until about 1905 when a major flood washed out a considerable amount of the mining infrastructure. Recognizing that they had probably extracted most of easily won gold, Dalton, Hanley, and Malony sold their interests, profitably, in 1907.

Alaska Mining Hall of Fame

Canadian historian Robert Coutts summarized Dalton's venture, "The only man to control a major transportation route into the Yukon and Klondike, Dalton ran pack trains and delivered livestock to the miners, he allowed others to use his trail on payment of a toll and backed his authority with his reputation and a gun. One group that refused to pay was accompanied for the whole journey by Jack Dalton who kept them well away from his route . . . They lost most of their stock. No one else tried to travel without paying."

John Treadwell, a California carpenter with a mining background, prospected, explored, developed and operated Alaska's first successful large-scale, low-grade gold mine. He played a major role in stimulating the economy of the Territory and its wilderness, as well as of the nation, through one of the most advanced operations of the American mining industry in the late 1800's.

Born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, Treadwell was building a house in 1881 in California for a prominent banker. At that time word came of a rich gold prospect across the Gastineau Channel from Juneau, Alaska's capital, on Douglas Island. The banker, John Fry, suggested Treadwell check it out.

He was not impressed and planned to return to San Francisco. While waiting for a ship, he met a French Canadian prospector who described the deposit but was down on his luck. Sight unseen, John gave the man $400 for the claim. Based on good assay results, he returned home and prepared to initiate a mining operation with Fry and an associate.

In May 1882 he returned to Alaska with a five-stamp mill and formed the Alaska Mill and Mining Company. Operations indicated the deposit could be profitable if worked on a large scale. A 120-stamp mill replaced the experimental one in 1883 and in 1887 another 120 stamps were added.

This was the beginning of the Treadwell Complex of four mines and five mills from which nearly $70 million in gold was mined. At peak capacity in 1914, the then-total of 960 stamps crushed 5,000 tons of rock dailya world record at the timewith an average value of $2.50 per ton.

Approximately 2000 men worked eight-hour shifts, seven days a week, 363 days a year, with no vacations. Christmas and July 4 were the only days off. In 1920 miners' wages averaged $100 per month, among the world's highest at that time.

The area known as Treadwell, during its 40-year evolution, grew from a single claim to a bustling community of workers and their families, complete with stores, mess halls, bunkhouses, a marching band and a natatorium.

Treadwell, however, had sold his interests in 1889 to the Alaska Gold Mining Company for a reported $1.5 million. His success had brought others into Alaska, creating new towns and national attention. His mining methods changed the industry.

In 1917 caving and flooding of the Treadwell Mines ended the operations. Treadwell was briefly involved in Western Alaska coal development but his venture was unsuccessful. Later he was involved in a bank but when it failed, he filed for bankruptcy.

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Alaska Mining Hall of Fame

George Pilz, as the first professional mining engineer in the new territory of Alaska, became a leading figure among the miners who entered Alaska in the first decades after purchase.

He was born in Saxony and educated at the famed mining academy at Freiberg. He left Germany in 1867 after exploring for coal, and thus avoided conscription for the Franco-Prussian War.

Initially Pilz looked at prospects in Canada and the United States for a German-owned company; he left that company to work for Calumet and Hecla at Hancock, in the Michigan copper ranges. In 1869, he left Michigan to erect a copper smelter in California.

Over the next decade, in California, Arizona, and Nevada, Pilz established a reputation for cantankerous competence that assured him employment, but kept him moving for the rest of his life at prospecting, mining, and erecting mills and smelters.

In 1878, Pilz met Nicholas Haley in San Francisco; the men had previously met at a job in California. Haley, who had been stationed with the U.S. Army in Sitka, had rich gold-quartz specimens from the Stewart and other lodes near Silver Bay, south of Sitka.

At first, Pilz thought the ore came from the rich Grass Valley district in California, but Haley introduced George to army officers and soldiers in San Francisco who convinced Pilz the samples were from Alaska.

Pilz found capital for the project, and, in February of 1879, moved to Alaska to start construction of a mine and mill at Silver Bay. Gold processed by Pilz's five-stamp mill was the first lode gold produced in Alaska. The mine shut down early in 1880, when it became evident that it was not rich enough to pay. Pilz was criticized at the time, but subsequent events redeemed his reputation.

To extend his range of prospecting throughout southeast Alaska, Pilz enlisted the aid of several Tlingit tribes. He followed up on their samples with experienced prospectors, including Alaska Mining Hall of Fame inductees Joe Juneau and Richard T. Harris.

One of his prospecting parties opened up Chilkoot Pass, later the gateway to the Klondike, after Navy Captain Beardslee convinced the local Chilkat tribe to open the pass on a profitable freighting basis.

Some of the best samples obtained by Pilz were brought by Alaska Mining Hall of Fame inductee Auk Chief Kawaée, who lived on Admiralty Island, near the site of the modern-day city of Juneau. The samples were almost certainly from the Gastineau Channel area.

Harris and Juneau made their lode discovery in early October 1880, following an early trip that took the men to Gold Creek, where they found good placer showings and fragments of quartz with gold.

On the first trip, Harris and Juneau went as far up Gold Creek as Snowslide Gulch, a left limit tributary, where they found marginally commercial indications of gold. (Snowslide tapped the quartz vein system that became the Ebner mine.)

A grubstake agreement recorded by Pilz allowed Harris and Juneau the right to stake placer claims for themselves, and also the right to stake lode claims for themselves at the ratio of 3:1 favoring Pilz.

Following the discovery of the rich deposits in Silver Bow Basin above the site of the modern-day city of Juneau, Harris and Juneau returned to Sitka. Pilz returned to the new town site with them. He approved of the work that the men had done, and accepted the claims as fairly staked. There were enough miners in the Territory of Alaska to set off a rush to the new site in December 1880.

N.A. Fuller, a storekeeper from Sitka, appears to have been associated with Pilz in some way. Later, Pilz maintained that Fuller was a subsidiary player, always acting on behalf of Pilz and not on his own behalf. The confused matter caused trouble later on for both Pilz and for Richard T. Harris. A Sitka jury sided with Fuller and awarded a judgement against Harris in 1886.

Pilz, who could have aided Harris, was in the San Francisco jail waiting for trial on a fraud charge, a charge that Pilz always denied. Many years later, Pilz had few good words to say about Harris, but numerous letters from the period show that Pilz then regarded Harris as one of his few friends.

Harris and the miners of Juneau sent gold dust to Pilz in San Francisco so that Pilz could make bail. The complex events suggest, again, that Pilz was his own worst enemy.

Pilz almost certainly erected the first prefabricated building in Alaska, when he erected a home pre-built in Sitka. On 7 February 1881 Pilz chaired the miner's meeting that adopted revised rules for the Harris district. He was also involved with the organization and platting of Juneau, then known as Rockwell or Harrisburgh.

Pilz's career took him to Mexico, South America, and several other sites in Alaska. Pilz was in Dawson in 1906; at Katalla in 1907, probably working on coal; in Chitina in 1911, then spent many years in the Forty-Mile region. He died in Eagle, Alaska, on September 15, 1926, vociferous and cantankerous to the end.

By Charles C. Hawley and David B. Stone, 1999.

Alaska Mining Hall of Fame